


The More They Stay the Same (aka Plus C'est la Me Chose)

by maven



Series: Policy and Procedure [8]
Category: Birds of Prey (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 05:21:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1001473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maven/pseuds/maven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...and the next stage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The More They Stay the Same (aka Plus C'est la Me Chose)

**Author's Note:**

> This is an Alternative Universe as it’s a blend of the Birds of Prey television show and a variety of DC comic books, particularity The Killing Joke and the Batman titles between 1983 and 1991.

"Status?" I ask for the fourth time. I haven't been able to connect with the security system cameras so I'm relying on a verbal description. Not always a good idea with the personification of taciturn.

"Everything's okay. I guess maybe a dozen."

I feel my eyes rolling. "Try counting. Exactly how many?"

"Well, exactly eighteen but dozen sounds so nice."

I bite back an angry reply. "Eighteen is too many for you alone. Canary, are you in position yet?"

"Just a few more seconds. Some of us can't leap tall buildings in a single bound," Canary answers, voice a little out of breath.

"Don't be such a mother hen. Eighteen is very doable."

"No, it's not" I counter. "Just wait until Canary gets into..." I say, using my 'let us be reasonable adults here' voice.

"Going off comms."

"No! Damn it! Canary!" I yell.

"Ow, volume. Umm, I can see. Just a few seconds to get through the door."

"Status!" I order. This is all going to hell in a hand basket. A turbocharged, fuel injected, NOX assisted hand basket.

"Well it seems to be a Yale lock so picking..." Canary begins.

"The eighteen goons!" I specify my parameters.

"Damn, broke a pick. Umm, seems to only be fifteen, oh, nice jumping scissor kick, make that thirteen. I should be through in about ten... damn, another one. Okay, make my ETA about twenty seconds, I need a new lock pick set and the bad guys are down to that dozen now. That silent alarm is really silent, by the way."

I growl in frustration and slap the button to notify the security company and police department of a break in before tapping in a few more keystrokes to request SWAT and ambulances.

"I'm in but there's only, oh shit," Canary says and the sound of gunfire comes over the speakers clearly.

"Canary!"

"She's busy. Give her a second."

"Gab?" I ask, too surprised to use code names.

"Do you know how hard it is to hold bullets? Give her a second until the path is clear."

I tap my fingers angrily but don't reply. Dinah can do amazing things with her powers but physics is still physics. I make another assault on the video surveillance camera and finally get a picture. There's a pile of bodies, a dark figure trading blows with the bad guys and Canary perched on a crate. As I watch there's a blur and the burst of bullets she had been holding tear into another crate.

"There," Dinah finally says. "We're down to about three bad guys so I'm just going to watch the show."

I resist beating my head against the desk. "Mask. Is it too much to ask that you wear your mask?"

"They cut down on my peripheral vision. And they itch. Two more! Plus, more importantly, I look stupid."

"I thought you turned off your comms?" I yell.

"Well, I told you I did," comes the reply. "But I didn't really as that would be reckless. One more! Worried?"

"When you get home..." I start the standard threat.

"...we will talk about your impulsive and reckless behaviour. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I'm done here. Anything else tonight?"

I glance across the boards. "Doesn't look like it. Both of you come in and we'll..."

"What's that base? You're breaking up. Static."

"I said," I repeat through gritted teeth. "Both of you come in and we'll..."

"Can't make you out base. Canary's going to come in and I'm going to hit a few clubs. Be home by midnight. Night!"

"Kyle James Gordon," I scream into the radio, "You are so grounded, young man." I feel hands on my shoulders. "God, was I like that?" I moan.

"Worse," Barbara tells me, stepping from behind me to slide onto my lap. I pull her close, careful not to jar the neural coupler, and sigh.

"Canary?" I say into the mike.

"Yes, Huntress?"

"Is he gone? Can you follow?"

"Follow? You are joking, right? I'm heading in. See you both in about thirty."

"Okay, Canary," Barbara says, leaning forward to the mike. "We'll have the kettle on."

"I'm getting too old for this," Canary mutters. "Cookies?"

"Chocolate chip and ginger snaps."

"Make that twenty-five minutes then. Putting comms to passive."

"Poptarts?" I mutter into her neck.

"Wildberry with neon blue icing."

"You're so good to me."

"I am, aren't I?" she says, twisting around to kiss me. Doubtless a light and teasing peck but screw that, we have twenty minutes at least until Dinah gets in. I pull and tug and knead at her shirt until I can slip my hands under to explore skin; nip and kiss at her neck. She tastes better than poptarts and I wonder if you can get the neon blue icing in a tub.

"Helena," she murmurs just when it's starting to get really interesting.

"Barbara?"

"Garage alarm."

I lean back. "I always hear bells when I kiss you."

"I make your ears ring?"

I laugh and hug her close before releasing her. She stands, tugging me up and I follow her into the kitchen to get the cookies out while she starts the kettle and toaster. The elevator alarm sounds that someone is coming up.

"He'll be okay?" I ask anxiously.

"He'll be fine. He's never broken curfew yet," she assures me. She doesn't need to remind me that a few times the clock was still striking when he hit the balcony.

"My respect for you grows daily," I mutter and she pours the boiling water into the teapot before pulling me into her embrace. "Boys are easier to raise than girls, right?"

She draws back enough to regard me silently before shaking her head. I groan and bury my face into her neck.

"Get a room," Dinah says as she enters the kitchen. "Leave the cookies. Oooh, any ice cream?"

She tosses Kyle's red Kevlar vest and overcoat onto a nearby chair. His concession to a secret identity is not to go clubbing in his 'work clothes'.

"Tough night?" Barbara asks her super casually. Gabby on the comms is unusual enough to trigger Barbara's maternal instinct.

"Same old, same old. Bullets are so draining," Dinah answers. She reaches across the table, gripping Barbara's wrist. "It's fine."

Barbara and her share a long look before Barbara nods, apparently satisfied. My own maternal instincts are now free to express themselves.

"Dinah?"

"Yeah, Helena?"

"Was he in the path of those bullets?"

She hesitates enough for me to know for certain that he was. I groan and lay my head on the table. I feel Barbara's fingers scratching through my hair.

"Kind of. He would have dodged. And the costume would have taken the rest," is the best Dinah can do.

"He's not bullet proof," I mutter.

"No," Barbara agrees, "but he's very, very good and every time he goes out he gets more experience. And, frankly, you can no more stop him from going out than I could stop the two of you. Or Bruce could stop Richard or me."

"So you're saying he's genetically predisposed to being stupid?" I moan.

"You know I'm not," Barbara assures me.

"I, on the other hand, have no such reservations," Dinah says, dipping a gingersnap into her tea. "We do what we do because it's necessary, not because it's safe."

"Or pays well," Barbara continues automatically.

"Or pays at all," I finish the mantra. It's not 'all for one' but not everyone can be Dumas.

"Speaking of which," Dinah says, speaking to both of us but focusing on Barbara. "I have a late session tomorrow. So if Babs wants to warm up Delphi for me I..."

"You won't be able to get near it all night," I finish. Dinah makes my early attempts at avoiding Delphi look like amateur hour. "How come you always have late sessions on your nights to run Delphi?"

"Lucky I guess," Dinah says with a grin. "Ice cream?"

"You okay?" I ask, leaving Barbara to grab the Ben & Jerry's from the freezer.

"Yeah," Dinah says. "Just feeling my age. You're going out with Junior tomorrow, right?"

I grin despite myself. "Yeah. Now that he's stopped adding the sound effects. Bop, bam, ka-pow every time he punched someone."

"I thought it was cute," Barbara says.

"Maybe the first few times," I counter. "Gotta admit, just to you two, I'm finding it harder and harder to keep up with him."

"You should," Dinah says, digging her spoon into her Phish Food ice cream. "You know what today is, right?"

"No. Something special?" Barbara answered, snagging the Chunky Monkey for herself and sliding the Half Baked across the table to me.

"Well, maybe. Twenty years ago I snuck into that elevator for the first time."

I stare at her in disbelief. "You're serious?"

"It's only math, Helena. You take this year and subtract that year and you get twenty. So, the reason it's hard to keep up with a seventeen year old is because we're twenty years away from being seventeen. Or," she added with what only could be described as an evil grin, "more than that for some of us."

"Hey!"

"That means there's some other anniversaries coming up," Barbara says softly. So softly that it catches my attention like a brick wall falling on my head.

"Dinah?"

"Yeah, Helena?"

"Go home now."

"But..."

"Go. Now."

"Oh, vroom vroom," she laughs, "Can I take my ice cream with me?"

"Yeah, but leave the chocolate sauce." Not as aesthetically pleasing as neon blue frosting but improvisation is key in our profession.

"Kinky. And too much information," Dinah says, pushing back in her chair and standing. "See you tomorrow night."

"Night, Dinah," Barbara says, "Say hi to Gabby from us."

"Consider it done. Night."

My goodnight is much more distracted. I weigh the amount of effort that'll be required tomorrow to clean up melted ice cream versus getting Barbara into the bedroom thirty seconds faster.

"C'mon," I say, pulling her toward our room. I grab the chocolate sauce.

"The ice cream."

"Worst case scenario it melts. Best case scenario Kyle'll eat it when he gets in."

In the five years since the neural coupler was perfected I'm not sure which benefit I enjoy more: watching her walk or her being more willing to let me carry her. I test the theory, pulling her hand and moving so that she walks in front of me, my hands light on her hips, eyes on her shoulders and back of her neck. Obviously she knows me well, and half way to the bedroom she turns, arms raising to encircle my neck as I continue to move forward, lifting her up smoothly. I make it to the bedroom on instinct and nearly twenty years of muscle memory because my eyes are closed and my senses full of Barbara.

"Which?" she asks as we hit the bed, twisting so she lands stretched out on top of me.

"Today I like carrying you best."

"And the sex?"

The question stops me cold. "What?"

"The neural coupler? Is it better with the neural coupler?"

"The box? It's been five years, Barbara. It took this long to ask?"

"Yes."

Some things never change.

I trace the back on my fingers along her cheek. "You feel more. Therefore you enjoy it more. Therefore I enjoy it more. Therefore, in that way, it's better. However," I continue, finger tracing behind her ear and down her spine to where the box stops it, "as making love with you has always been fairly universe defining in it's perfection I'm not sure that it matters."

"Take it off," she whispers. "Prove it."

I'm not one to hesitate. Or resist a dare.

I press the releases on the unit, sliding it from the ports above and below where the bullet tore through so long ago, and feel her grow heavy against my legs. She's watching my reaction closely but I don't have to guard it or hide it because it really doesn't matter and never has.

I brush her hair back. It's a bit shorter than I like and greying faster than she likes. And there are lines and creases, mostly from laughing but not all. Mostly caused by me, but not all. "I've been dying just to feel you by my side, to know that you're mine," I tell her.

"You've been quoting that song for twenty years," she says softly before catching my wandering finger with her teeth.

"I will sell my soul for something pure and true, someone like you," I whisper-sing before I switch to simply whispering. "And, having sold my soul twenty-four years ago..."

"Helena," she protests but I hush her by adding a few more fingers, which she nips and sucks at until I frown at her to stop because concentration is hard enough.

"Hush. And something pure and true is pure and true irregardless of whether you walk or are in a chair, if you have grey in your hair, if you're fifty or a hundred and fifty. Got it?"

"Regardless. Just regardless, there's no such word as"

"Barbara, I'm about to have my universe redefined. Can the English lesson wait until morning?"

She wisely nods and together we rediscover how to remove clothing with only three quarters of the usual limbs and how chocolate really does make everything great things better. Messy but better.

"Is this insecurity, nostalgia or something you need to tell me?" I ask much later, tracing random circles and designs over the line that separates feeling from deadened. I'd been leery about the newest version of the box, actually all versions of the thing. I'd been assured that the painful feedback problem had finally been solved and that there were no anticipated long-term effects. It was the unanticipated effects that kept me up at night.

"The first two, maybe. The neural coupler is working fine."

"Insecure about me or about you? Or about us?"

"I dunno," she says, sighing as I knead the muscles in the small of her back. "Me, I guess."

I grin. "This is about the big five-oh? Because I thought I convinced you at the time. Or are you pre-freaking out at turning fifty-five?"

"Maybe," she murmurs softly. "Convince me some more?"

"Even my imagination has limits. "

"Let me help you out with a suggestion then," she says, her voice low and seductive. She lifts herself up over me before relaxing one arm and rolling off. "Go put the ice cream away."

I groan but get up, grabbing my robe and the chocolate sauce. "I would lie for you, beg and steal for you..."

"Put the ice cream back in the fridge for you," she adlibs, snuggling into my pillow.

"Don't you fall asleep," I say sternly.

"Nope," she says. Liar. She's snoring faintly before I get to the door.

I'm still humming the song when I reach the kitchen and discover that putting the ice cream away is, as Barbara would say, moot.

"Hey, Mom. I saved the Half Baked 'till last. Just in case."

"Trying to bribe me with my own ice cream?"

"Oh, no, ma'am," he says earnestly. "That would imply I was in trouble. And I know I'm not."

"You know you are," I say, shaking the chocolate sauce bottle at him. He looks at it, the bedroom door and then me.

"If you weren't my parents I'd say something like 'oooh, someone got lucky'. But, you being my parents, it'd just be a major source of trauma and then you'd be forking the big bucks out to Dr. Dinah for the rest of your life."

He is, they say, the spitting image of me. It obviously doesn't just apply to the physical similarities.

"You scared me," I tell him. I grab a spoon and jump up onto the counter to sit beside him.

"I figured. Sorry."

"You're not."

"I'm sorry you were scared. I'm not sorry about what I did."

Like they say, spitting image. I squirt the remainder of the chocolate sauce into my ice cream. "Brat."

"Won't you need that sauce for..." he asked, jerking his head toward the bedroom.

"Double brat. Did you have fun?"

"Yeah. But not too much fun. Unlike you. Is that chocolate behind your ear?"

"Do you tease Barbara like this?"

His eyes go wide in shock. "Mama? About sex? Oh my God, no. I've still not recovered from The Talk."

I shudder in sympathy. "Me either."

We sit for a few more minutes, eating ice cream in silence.

"So," I finally say, "any reason you're home an hour before curfew?"

"Thousand word essay on Hamlet's soliloquy due on Wednesday." Okay so maybe not 100% spitting image. There's some Barbara in there somehow. "And the new AP English lit teacher is so hot."

But then again, mostly me.

"Yeah, she is. I mean, Kyle, she's a teacher. I mean... she's older than..." I pause and shake my head. "I'm not really in a position to say anything about this, am I?"

"Me having a crush on an English teacher only eight years older than me? Just take the Fifth, Mom," he says with a grin and I realize he's been yanking my chain "I was scared too," he admits suddenly.

"Good?" I ask. Maternal instinct wants to protect him from being frightened. The hunter's instinct knows that fear is a wise teacher.

"Yeah, good to be scared. I'll wait for the backup next time."

"Thanks. Barbara worries."

"I know."

"I knew you could handle it."

"Yeah, right."

"I knew you could handle it," I amend, "but I was still terrified. Payback really is a bitch."

"Mama would be laughing if she wasn't being terrified along with you, right?"

"Absolutely," I agree, giving him a one armed hug before jumping down to toss the empty cartons into the trash and the spoons into the sink. "Don't stay up too late studying."

"Don't stay up late looking for chocolate sauce."

I toss the dishtowel into his face and his laughter follows me back to the bedroom.

She has, and no surprise there, fallen asleep. I make sure the neural coupler is safe and close on her nightstand before crawling in, scooting closer and snuggling into her as she snuggles into me. There's the sweet scent of her, us, me and chocolate and his words come back. Brat.

"Hel, what are you doing?" she asks sleepily.

I decide not to bring Kyle into the conversation. Nothing kills Barbara's mood faster than mentioning either her dad or Kyle while searching for chocolate sauce. "Looking for sauce I missed first time."

"Behind my ear?"

"You never know."

"You're incorrigible, insatiable," she begins listing.

"In love. Some things never change," I agree. And hopefully never will.

END

**Author's Note:**

> This is the last of my Birds of Prey stories. Not necessarily the last one I write - but this is the last one that happens. Just so we all understand.


End file.
